Thoughts, Ideas, and Concepts by Sandra Parks

Posts tagged ‘President’

Breaking the glass ceiling

It was traditional thinking when women were not given a chance to reach the top positions because of family related issues and responsibilities. A women has to cater to her family needs hence contributing 80 hours per week does not seem possible for her and she would opt for a job with flexi timings. This nutshell thinking has given way in today’s world. The top positions are clutched by women who are willing to initiate a change in people’s outlook.

Either female were not given opportunities to reach the higher hierarchy thinking she wouldn’t be able to commit wholeheartedly or the women itself elected themselves to be better homemakers than commanders.

In April 2000, Indra Nooyi was promoted as the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and President of PepsiCo. Indra had the rare distinction of being the highest-ranking Indian woman in the corporate world of America. She was also ranked by the fortune as one the most powerful women. Several other examples of successful women are Jayashree Vallal, Vice-President at Cisco Systems, and Radha Ramaswami Basu, CEO of Support.com. These women have set an example at the cost of shrinking their personal life. They are career oriented but how many women are willing to take this plunge?

Women are great leaders. Women have more patience. They are more empathetic, and they are fantastic listeners. They are used to handling many things at one time. Hence we have seen an increase in the number of women CEO’s. The number is definitely not equivalent to the number of male CEO’s and will it ever reach that level is the question?

Nobel jury defends Obama decision

OSLO – Members of the Norwegian committee that gave Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize are strongly defending their choice against a storm of criticism that the award was premature and a potential liability for the U.S. president.

Asked to comment on the uproar following Friday’s announcement, four members of the five-seat panel told The Associated Press that they had expected the decision to generate both surprise and criticism.

Three of them rejected the notion that Obama hadn’t accomplished anything to deserve the award, while the fourth declined to answer that question. A fifth member didn’t answer calls seeking comment.

“We simply disagree that he has done nothing,” committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland told the AP on Tuesday. “He got the prize for what he has done.”

Jagland singled out Obama’s efforts to heal the divide between the West and the Muslim world and scale down a Bush-era proposal for an anti-missile shield in Europe.

“All these things have contributed to — I wouldn’t say a safer world — but a world with less tension,” Jagland said by phone from the French city of Strasbourg, where he was attending meetings in his other role as secretary-general of the Council of Europe.

He said most world leaders were positive about the award and that most of the criticism was coming from the media and from Obama’s political rivals.

“I take note of it. My response is only the judgment of the committee, which was unanimous,” he said, adding that the award to Obama followed the guidelines set forth by Alfred Nobel, the Swedish industrialist and inventor of dynamite, who established the Nobel Prizes in his 1895 will.

“Alfred Nobel wrote that the prize should go to the person who has contributed most to the development of peace in the previous year,” Jagland said. “Who has done more for that than Barack Obama?”

Aagot Valle, a left-wing Norwegian politician who joined the Nobel panel this year, also dismissed suggestions that the decision to award Obama was without merit.

“Don’t you think that comments like that patronize Obama? Where do these people come from?” Valle said by phone from the western coastal city of Bergen. “Well, of course, all arguments have to be considered seriously. I’m not afraid of a debate on the peace prize decision. That’s fine.”

In Friday’s announcement, the committee said giving Obama the peace prize could be seen as an early vote of confidence intended to build global support for the policies of his young administration.

The left-leaning committee whose members are appointed by the Norwegian Parliament lauded the change in global mood wrought by Obama’s calls for peace and cooperation, and praised his pledges to reduce the world stock of nuclear arms, ease U.S. conflicts with Muslim nations and strengthen the U.S. role in combating climate change.

However, the decision stunned even the most seasoned Nobel watchers. They hadn’t expected Obama, who took office barely two weeks before the Feb. 1 nomination deadline, to be seriously considered until at least next year.

The award drew heated derision from Obama’s political opponents in the Republican party, and was even questioned by some members of Obama’s own Democratic party, who wondered what the president had done to merit the $1.4 million honor.

Michael S. Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee, said naming Obama showed “how meaningless a once honorable and respected award has become.”

In a fundraising letter, Steele wrote that “the Democrats and their international leftist allies want America made subservient to the agenda of global redistribution and control. And truly patriotic Americans like you and our Republican Party are the only thing standing in their way.”

Columnist Thomas Friedman wrote in the New York Times that Obama “has not done anything yet on the scale that would normally merit such an award.”

Even in Europe, where Obama is hugely popular, many editorials and pundits questioned what he had done to deserve the award.

“Scrap the Nobel Peace Prize,” foreign affairs commentator Bronwen Maddox wrote in The Times of London. “It’s an embarrassment and even an impediment to peace. President Obama, in letting the committee award it to him, has made himself look vain, a fool and dangerously lost in his own mystique.”

Yet Obama was humble in acknowledging the prize.

“Let me be clear: I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments, but rather as an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations,” Obama said Friday in the White House Rose Garden. “To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who’ve been honored by this prize.”

Nobel Committee member Inger-Marie Ytterhorn noted that the president didn’t greet the news with joy.

“I looked at his face when he was on TV and confirmed that he would receive the prize and would come to Norway, and he didn’t look particularly happy,” she told AP.

Some of the most celebrated peace prize laureates include Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa and Nelson Mandela. The award has occasionally honored more controversial figures, like the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat or former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Sometimes it raises the profile of peace workers or activists, such as Rigoberta Menchu of Guatemala in 1992 or Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai in 2004.

“Whenever we award the peace prize, there is normally a big debate about it,” said Ytterhorn, a nine-year veteran of the award committee.

Asked whether there was a risk that the prize could backfire on Obama by raising expectations even higher and give ammunition to his critics, Ytterhorn said “it might hamper him,” because it could distract from domestic issues such as health care reform.

Jagland said he didn’t think the Nobel Peace Prize would hurt Obama domestically but added the committee did not take U.S. politics into consideration when making their decision.

“I’m not so familiar with American politics, and I don’t want to interfere with it, because this is a totally independent committee,” he said. “We should not look at internal politics.”

Kaci Kullman Five, a former Conservative Party parliamentarian and longtime Nobel committee member, said “we all expected that there would be a discussion” about awarding Obama. She declined further comment, deferring to the Nobel Peace Prize tradition of only having the committee chairman discuss prize selections publicly.

Valle, who left her seat in Parliament last week because of her Nobel panel appointment, said the criticism shouldn’t overshadow important issues raised by the prize.

“Of course I expected disagreement and debate on the prize, on giving him the prize,” she said. “But what I want now is that we seriously raise a discussion regarding nuclear disarmament.”

You have to wonder sometimes how someone who is purportedly so intelligent can commit political suicide in so many ways.

Here is a man who promised something like stopping Don’t Ask during his campaign.

And rather than accomplishing something so simple early on, which many of us conservatives don’t really worry about, would have taken so little skull sweat.

I have very close friends and acquaintances who are gay and I think they are funny and fun to be around. Most of them are actually starting to understand that conservative doesn’t mean evil and anti gay – it means we can all get along, discuss issues without being shrill and that conservatism doesn’t mean we think all gay people should be shot.

In fact, most of us think that gay lifestyle is fine as long as they don’t do anything as annoying as coming around like some religions do and push their agenda down our throats.

I don’t like the religions doing it (and I am very religious – but I am very private as well) and I don’t support anyone else doing the same thing.

Is that cool with everyone?

If you’re religious – don’t judge. Live by the example you purport to support. Don’t tell people they are evil – let their choice be between them and the God you believe in. We certainly don’t know everything down here, and that certainly leaves human room for error on our judgment of people for any number of reasons.

Love your neighbor as yourself – that isn’t an option if you truly believe in what you espouse. It is the life that Christ told you to lead. If you believe in that, forgive what you see as a sin and move on. To hate the person because of the behavior is like someone hating you for YOUR core beliefs.

If someone is gay and conservative – don’t smack them down for their choice of sexuality. That’s ignorant and hatefilled and certainly doesn’t earn gold stars in heaven.

Don’t Ask was a silly thing to have in place. It is just as silly as saying that women who volunteer to go into the infantry shouldn’t be give a right to pass the same skillset tests that men do – and if they can tough out what are arduous tests (confidence course, crawl to earn your blue and such) then they have a right to carry a rifle and bleed for their country.

I wouldn’t want to have two men in the foxhole playing around on guard duty in a potential combat area, but really, do you think that they would be that stupid?

The same thing goes for a woman – if she proves she can hump a ruck 30 miles in hard, hot conditions – one that can weigh over 100 pounds, far be it from me to tell her she can’t do it. Just don’t turn around and try to say that they shouldn’t have to because they are women – I think we can agree to that.

I know some women I have met in my life that I would be happy to have next to me, and I certainly wouldn’t be thinking about them if I knew there was someone right over there ready to kill me. I’d be hoping she could shoot straight and reload quickly.

Get over it Mr. President. End the program now.

Let’s face it though, if you do – they might expect something else from you – and if you don’t stop this, you can always use this as a distraction to keep them from focusing on their beliefs about other this – fiscal responsibility, gun rights, etc.

I know my friends hanging around me are starting to listen and learn – and if everyone keeps waking up to being used by the progressives (you know – like that 45 year war on poverty – how’s that going by the way? After trillions thrown at that – any better yet?) they might see that you keep dangling carrots in front of them to stop them from realizing you are riding on their backs and actually doing things that they don’t support.

Help bring them around to our way of thinking folks – there’s no need for alienation, and the strife and strident stances drive them further from the light you are seeking to bring them to. Is that the way our Savior modeled his approach?

I say no. How say you?

This article was deep to me so I thought that I would share and see what sorts of comments that I would get from it!!! What do you all think???